A model of intraurban employment location: An application to Bogota, Colombia

A micro model is formulated to study the location behavior of manufacturing firms in urban areas. A bid-rent function is derived from the profit function and captures the firms' locational equilibrium situations. The theoretical model is extended to a multinomial logit specification and estimated using establishment survey results for Bogota, Colombia. The survey included information on (1) attributes of the establishment such as plant space, and (2) attributes of the plant site such as access to markets. The estimated model is capable of predicting the location choices of different types of firms.     

A note on the Bayesian estimation of Solow's distributed lag model

This note develops the Bayesian estimation of the parameters of Solow's distributed lag model with implicit autocorrelation of disturbances in its autoregressive form. The estimation technique extends Chetty's method for independent disturbances. The results of some Monte Carlo experiments are given comparing point estimates from the posterior distributions with the maximum likelihood estimates. The characteristics of the Bayesian and maximum likelihood estimates are very similar.     

A further note on arrow's impossibility theorem

For arbitrary measure spaces of agents we investigate the existence of social welfare functions which fulfill a suitable non-dictatorship axiom; it turns out that there is an essential difference between finite and σ-finite but infinite measure spaces. Furthermore the condition of universal domain of social welfare functions is weakened.     

A note on amemiya's partially generalized least squares

This note explores the relationship between the generalized least squares estimator and Amemiya's partially generalized least squares estimator and establishes the conditions under which the two estimators are equal.     

A note on the unbiasedness of Swamy's estimator for the random coefficient regression model

In this note the estimator proposed by Swamy (1970) for the random coefficient regression model is proved to be unbiased under fairly general conditions. In addition, the conditions under which the mean of the estimator exists are derived.     

Testing a model of intraurban firm relocation

A neoclassical model of firm behavior, analogous to Muth's household analysis, in a monocentric urban environment yields comparative static predictions concerning radial direction of relocation. Knowledge of plant production and demand conditions and economic characteristics of the urban environment is needed to make relocation predictions. Expected and unexpected relations between the technology, economic environment, and comparative static results on input demands and location are derived. A small, detailed data set from Cincinnati is used to test a probit model of the relocation decision. The results are consistent with theoretical expectations. Demand changes, initial plant size, and the relative magnitude of transport costs are the most important determinants of the propensity to decentralize. Traditional measures of agglomeration economies lack explanatory power.     

A note on Balestra's (1980) approximate estimator for the first-order moving average process

An approximate procedure, based on Balestra's stated assumptions, is developed. The new method is shown to have superior performance to the approximate procedure developed by Balestra for small sample sizes when the value of the moving average parameter, C, is between zero and 0.50. For C in this region, the new method is also shown to be nearly as good as the exact procedure.     

Intrametropolitan location of employment

Differences among employment density functions for members of different income and sex groups in Toronto in 1971 indicate that jobs held by females were more centralized than jobs held by males, jobs held by lower-middle income females were more centralized than jobs held by other females, and jobs held by high-income males were more centralized than jobs held by other males. It is also concluded that use of the negative exponential functional form involves a misspecification of the employment density function.     

The intraurban spatial distribution of employment: which government interventions make a difference?

An annual panel of employment at the census tract level for the Atlanta region is used to estimate the change in a tract's share of regional employment as a function of a variety of tax incentive programs, different transportation infrastructure investments, and crime. The results show that neighborhood-based property tax abatements, job tax credits, and highway improvements increase a tract's employment share. Higher crime is found to reduce employment share.     

Urban ecology and residential location theories: Application in nigeria's socio-cultural milieu

Urban ecological studies are generally concerned with the spatial distribution of population characteristics, organisations, activities and behaviours across the urban terrain. These spatial distributions are taken to reflect the operation of socio-economic processes. Anglo-American urban ecological investigators had formulated much of the prevailing urban ecological theories of today. These theories were based on studies of their own socio-cultural and economic environments, which were by no means universal. This study, applies the principles of these well-known theories to a different socio-economic and cultural environment—Nigerian, with a view to testing their cross-cultural validity. This is done (i) by testing some empirical data on the city of Lagos, upon some specific propositions embodied in these theories; with a view towards their verification and validation; and (ii) by examining the over-all explanatory power of the theories in accounting for broad urban ecological patterns as revealed by data or information on the study city, and culture. The findings suggest that while similarities in urban ecological patterns in the two environments are discernible in some variables, they significantly differ in others, and even where the patterns appear to be similar, they are explainable by quite different factors. Urban ecological patterns could therefore be said to be culture-specific.     

A note on the uniform asymptotic normality of location M-estimates

In the robustness framework, the parametric model underlying the data is usually embedded in a neighborhood of other plausible distributions. Accordingly, the asymptotic properties of robust estimates should be uniform over the whole set of possible models. In this paper, we study location M-estimates calculated with a previous generalized S-scale and show that, under some regularity conditions, they are uniformly asymptotically normal over contamination neighborhoods of known size. There is a trade off between the size of the neighborhood and the breakdown point of the GS-scale, but it is possible to adjust the estimates so that they have 50% breakdown point whereas the uniform asymptotic normality is ensured over neighborhoods that contain up to 25% of contamination. Alternatively, both the breakdown point and the size of the neighborhood could be chosen to be 38%. These results represent an improvement over those obtained recently by Salibian-Barrera and Zamar (2004) J.R. Berrendero was Spanish supported by Grant BFM2001-0169 and Grand 06/0050/2003 (Comunidad De Madrid) R. H. Zamar was partially supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).     

Intrametropolitan migration: A simultaneous model of employment and residential location of white and black households

This study explores the relationship between the home and job location of the household within a metropolitan area. The model is an extension of the Alonso-Muth framework and allows the household to simultaneously choose its residential and employment location, monthly rent, number of rooms and the type of structure of the dwelling unit, so as to maximize its utility subject to the budget constraint.The data base is the Home Interview Survey conducted in 1965 by the (San Francisco) Bay Area Transportation Study Commission. The coefficients in the simultaneous model are estimated by two-stage least squares. The cross-section sample is stratified by tenure into renters and homeowners; by race into black and white households; and further by position in the life-cycle.The results of the location equations reveal that both the home and job location are responsive to each other which implies that the decentralization of jobs will result in the decentralization of residences for black households. The results of the housing equations imply that black and white households have almost identical elasticity of demand for housing. There is very slight evidence of price discrimination against black households. However, there is evidence that black households do face a geographical segregated market for rental housing.The results of this study argue that the decentralization of population is not due solely to rising incomes and will continue as long as industry decentralizes. Furthermore, governmental policies of increasing the income of central city residents, through subsidies to employers to locate in the central city will have a strong effect: inducing those residents to remain in or move into the central city. Thus, a policy that is meant to alleviate the plight of the city center may only result in strengthening the racial and income split between the suburb and the central city inhabitants.     

A note on a heteroscedastic model

In this article the author considers a regression model where the variance of the error term is a linear combination of certain independent variables and compares four different estimators of the coefficients of this linear combination, They are (1) the estimator proposed by Goldfeld and Quant and called the Modified Glejser Method, (2) the estimator proposed by Hildreth and Houck, (3) the generalized least squares method, and (4) the maximum likelihood estimator. It is shown that the first two are asymptotically not fully efficient whereas the last two are.     

Intra-urban location of manufacturing employment in Colombia

This paper describes the spatial distribution of manufacturing employment in Bogota and analyzes the changes in the location patterns over the 1970–1975 period using industrial directory data. The analysis shows strong evidence of the spatial decentralization of manufacturing employment owing to a steady movement of firms outward from central areas; new large firms with more than 100 employees tend to locate near the periphery while the births of small firms tend to take place near the center. Measures of concentration indicate an increasing dispersion of manufacturing establishments during the period.